The Human League

The Human League are a British synth-pop band formed in Sheffield, England, in 1977, and one of the pioneering acts of electronic pop music. The group emerged from Sheffield's experimental synthesizer scene and initially operated as an all-electronic outfit built around Philip Oakey, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, releasing early, more avant-garde material before Ware and Marsh departed to form Heaven 17 amid creative differences with Oakey.

Oakey rebuilt the band around a strikingly different concept, recruiting two teenagers, Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley, as co-vocalists after spotting them dancing in a Sheffield nightclub. This lineup produced the band's defining work, the 1981 album Dare, which topped the charts and yielded the international number-one single «Don't You Want Me», one of the most enduring synth-pop anthems of the era. Other hits from this period include «Love Action», «Open Your Heart» and «(Keep Feeling) Fascination».

The Human League's sound is built on lush synthesizer textures, drum machines and a distinctive blend of male-female vocal interplay, helping define the sound of early-1980s British electronic pop and influencing countless synth-driven acts that followed. David Bowie once called them representative of the sound of the future. Since the late 1980s the group has remained a stable trio of Oakey, Catherall and Sulley, continuing to record and perform.